


Lost in you

by Nelja-in-English (Nelja)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Captivity, Dark, Dark femslash week, F/F, Horror, Kissing, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22813972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja-in-English
Summary: Manuela understands very quickly that she will never see the darkness again.
Relationships: Helen/Manuela Dominguez
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48
Collections: The Magnus Archives Rare Pairs 2020





	Lost in you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KingOuija](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingOuija/gifts).



Manuela understands very quickly that she will never see the darkness again. She will never feel its cold embrace. The ugly yellow corridors are always illuminated, and that doesn't change when she breaks all the lights. Even the relative darkness of nighttime is forbidden to her.

She has tried to close her eyes, of course. It's still the same view, even brighter, even more distorted. It goes beyond eyes, directly into her brain. Like the lights you can see when you press on your closed eyes, except you can never escape them.

That's the only reason she hasn't torn out her own eyes. In this prison of madness, it wouldn't help.

She thinks often about the Black Sun, her life's work, destroyed by the new Archivist, after the old one made their ritual fail. Is it a consolation, thinking about how even before being here she had lost everything? Or does it make things worse? Is Manuela even able to tell the difference anymore?

The description of her parents' Hell used to make her angrily amused. She thought herself better than this, she could proudly bear the suffering, being punished for being right and revolting against God. She wishes someone would come to her, insult her, tell her why she's suffering, so she could despise them.

She's exhausted, and she knows, too, that she can never sleep again. She's started dreaming while awake. She doesn't know whether it's the lack of sleep, or this place. The scientist in her imagines control experiences, being unable to sleep for other reasons, wonders about fractals and Hilbert’s Grand Hotel. She elaborates questions without answers.

The next turn more pressing, more painful. Why am I here? Will I be allowed to die? Is this how the man in the box felt? She didn't think madness was a specific fear of hers. She thought she could reject reality as easily as life. She can't. It's not empty enough. The things that aren't real, they won't stop.

Manuela doesn't know how much time has passed when she hears someone.

"Hello, sweetheart," the woman says. Or at least, it looks like a woman, but Manuela is not sure she ever was one. Her smile is too wide, wider than her face - it's not possible, but it's true.

"I'm no one's sweetheart," Manuela answers. She wishes she could show it in her tone of voice, make herself sour and bitter and salty; no one ever called her sweet. But her voice just comes out weak and tired.

"It's okay, I don't really have a heart." the thing answers. "You live here now, so I wanted to visit you. I used to sell houses, you know. Have you already looked at my mirrors?"

Manuela raises her head to snarl that she has, but by doing so, she finds herself looking into one of these mirrors again. And she doesn't recognize her own face. Her hair was jet black, that's sure, she was proud of it, but it wasn't so curly. Her face is so different, is it only because she's lost and weak and lost her edge? She can't remember the exact differences, but she doesn't feel like it's her. It makes her shiver.

"You're so pretty, sweetheart," the thing says again, encouraging. Manuela looks at her, in defiance, and also because she doesn't want to look at her own wrong reflection anymore.

The creature looks like a woman - then she looks like an impressionist painting of a woman - but she still has a suit that doesn't work with what she's doing. Manuela wishes she was in a position to criticize her clothes, but her own are worse.

"I can show you a room. You would like it, I think," the woman coos at her. Manuela won't follow her, and says so.

"Poor thing. You like my corridors that much?"

"I'm just finding them extremely boring. Why are you keeping me here?"

"Why not?" the thing asks, almost beaming. 

Of course. "Don't you have something worse in store?"

"Oh, do you really want me to?"

Manuela does, or she persuades herself she does. She almost sighs in relief when the creature's claws pierce through her lungs. The pain makes her more awake than she has been in... she can no longer count, but it has been so long.

The pain is sharp, but isn't the actual suffering of no longer being able to breathe, just of being stabbed. Something gratuitous that will never kill her. It's almost familiar. When the creature gets closer, she feels a rush of gratefulness, and she lets herself be kissed, answers it even, bites the tongue, all pretense of politeness lost.

"This is not worse," the thing says, with her too-wide smile. "At least I hope not, sweetheart."

Manuela doesn't offer her an answer, otherwise she would have to recognize it. She wonders what the creature could do to her. And if she should provoke her into doing it.

"Maybe I just like you and want to protect you?" she suggests. "Take this, then."

Manuela is ready to refuse, to spit in her face, but the blanket that was given to her - she can see it's different. She can't see through it - of course she can't see through things - but it feels solid, and when she puts it over her head, she can see nothing. The darkness surrounds her for the first time since she got here. She feels tears on her cheeks.

"Thank you," she says grudgingly, because maybe this way it won't be immediately taken again. "And my name is Manuela."

"Is it? I'm Helen."

She disappears, and Manuela buries herself deeper in her blanket. It doesn't bring her sleep. If anything, she tries to keep her eyes wide open, until it hurts, lest the bright dreams should take her again.

Manuela remembers old victims. She doesn't remember their names, but they hid under blankets when afraid too, thinking it would protect them. Now she's just like them. She hates it. She won't let the blanket go.

* * *

Helen regularly comes back, chats with her, kisses her. It's easy to let her. To think it's a way to convince her to give more. Also, it makes the pleasure of it less guilty, even when Helen kisses so well. A long time passes, but it's hard to keep track of the time; Helen apologetically tells her when she asks.

She’s getting used to it. This is bad, but she can’t bring herself to dwell on the bad. It’s awful enough as it is.

"I have a gift for you," Helen says to her one day. "You miss the outside world, don't you? I will let you go to your house, maybe take a few things to bring back here?"

She accepts with enthusiasm. Helen takes her hand "You'll come back, though."

It's easy to promise, to lie. Just a door to pass, and she's in the real world, in a room that seems right, finite, its colour not a sickly yellow. She cries in happiness, before realizing she doesn't recognize this place.

She tries to remember. Of course, she hasn't come home for a while. She was hiding in an old church. She rummages through the drawers and cupboards, hoping to find a piece of clothing or jewelry that reminds her of herself.

She gathers her memories, from the start, and finds a blank. She can't remember her own name. She tries desperately to remember anything; it's so disjointed. She remembers the Dark, of course, and she finds comfort in it for the shortest moment, before realizing that she can't remember her blind, charismatic leader's name.

How could she not realize, when she was in the corridors? What was she thinking about? Was she even able to think?

She looks in the whole room for ID, any personal letter, something that might help her to remember, but there's nothing personal here. She opens a science book to reassure herself she can still read, and she manages this, but she no longer cares.

She remembers she wanted to take revenge on someone, but she's forgotten who. 

After horror, anger starts boiling in her guts. Helen did this on purpose. Helen. Of course, she can remember that name just fine. The creature would let her go without a fuss, if she had stolen her everything! Of course, someone with no life left would come back to her! 

And the sad thing is, she wants to. But she won't. She won't give Helen the satisfaction. She has nothing and no one here, but she can still die. She looks out the window. It seems she lived on the fourth floor, which is... probably not enough, she thinks. Isn't it weird that scientific details get back to her where her own name won't? You can die from such a fall, but it's not sure. So she goes to the roof. Or at least, she tries. It doesn't seem accessible. But she can still break open the door of a last floor neighbour and use their window. They will mind, of course. She finds it quite funny.

She can see the streets and the cars below, and she jumps.

And she falls back onto the carpeted floor of Helen's corridors.

She screams. She feared it when she forced the door. She even feared this when she passed her head, then half of her body, through the window. But it's too late, Helen shouldn't be able to do this now, in the open air! She screams it to her, while the monster looks at her with what looks like condescending tenderness.

"Your apartment was sold a long time ago, sweetheart," Helen explains. "I made a copy for you. I was selling houses. Anyway, do you think I would really let you go? I ate you, and you're mine."

She doesn't apologize, of course. She's lying incarnate and she does what she is.

"Who am I? What is my name?"

Helen hands her her dark blanket. It's impossible to remember letting it go; maybe in her room that doesn't exist. And understanding explodes in her head, blinding.

"It's cursed, isn't it? You gave it to me on purpose?"

"It was a gift," Helen says. "I thought you shared with me the love of not knowing."

"Not this way!" It's not the same and it's never been the same. She wants to be sure of it, she wants to remember enough.

"I was wrong, then," Helen answers, and she looks like she made an honest mistake, so loving, but she won't tell her the real name and she won't apologize and she's so good a liar. "If it reassures you, it happens to everyone, in the end. Everyone I eat, I mean. This just made it faster. On the other hand, you remembered how to talk longer than most, because I was always talking to you, my beautiful captive. I really do like you."

Terror and anger fight in the captive's mind, and finally she clings onto Helen, unwilling to let this go too. It's unfair, she thinks, it's so unfair... Can she have any hope left?

"And who knows," Helen says, "maybe one day you'll kill me, sweetheart, and become me, and I'll have no name again."

And there it is, some hope for her, and some terror too. For both of them, she realizes, and for one moment she kisses Helen with passion and means it.


End file.
